Wednesday, October 15, 2008

In Which the Blogger Surprises Himself By (Kinda) Defending Nocioni

1) To go off the preseason performance thus far, 41-41 seems pie-in-the-sky to me. Obvious caveats to this include essentially replacing "Bury" Larry Hughes' preseason's minutes with Ben Gordon's, a Noah who bears a closer resemblance to last year's player, and an improving Rose. Still, I'm a little worried.

2) Before watching last night's game, I would have largely agreed with this assessment from K.D.:

Nocioni keeps getting entitlement minutes because it seems as if that next low-percentage 20-footer is going in.

Now, however, I'm not so sure. It seems to me that one of the really vital things to surround Derrick Rose with is three-point shooting. I've noticed that when he drives to the lane and the defenders collapse (as they must, or Rose will break them), he is more than capable of kicking it outside to an open jumpshooter at the 3-pt. line. (It seemed to me that last night wide-open, top-of-the-key threes could be had at pretty much any time.) If I'm correct about this, then it seems to me Noce can play a pretty important role on this team. Say what you will about him---and this might be more of a knock against Pax, than a compliment to Noce---but he is still the second best 3-pt. shooter on this team. With a guard like Rose penetrating and kicking, that's a valuable asset, one that might somewhat offset all of the other stupid things Noce does that basically cause me to want to blow his brains out.

3 Comments:

"41" was down from "57", so give the mug a half-clap for keepin' it real!

I did enjoy Noc hitting those threes on Tuesday. Bulls fans have always respected the guy, even if we don't agree with his decisions. And he does appear to have a bit of chemistry with Rose, if "chemistry" means "Rose passing on floaters in the lane to blindly dish out passes to Noc behind the three-point line."

He knows Noc is there. We've all done it, in a game. It's an easy way out; work, work, work ... chuck it out.

I would love to keep Andres in the right role, and Derrick needs shooters around him. Badly. I just worry.

I also have this, from the girlfriend:

"I mean, last year, and the year before, he had a mullet. But this year, he really has a mullet. He really does. That's a freakin' mullet."

It's the third game of preseason with at least 4 guys hurt significantly enough to miss games or play poorly (Gooden, Noah, Noc, and BG (and does anybody else think a stubbed toe at this point is a little fishy?)). Isn't it a little early to be whinning about the rotation? They gave Hughes a few minutes to see if any miracles had occurred over the summer. At $13 million, you'd like the guy to at least practice hard, right? And you know he isn't going to do that if you bury him on the bench from the beginning of training camp.

KD--Thanks for commenting. For what it's worth, before the game against Minny, I had the Bulls winning 38 games, so I'm probably just over-reacting to a meaningless preseason game in which Gordon didn't play and Noah played all of 5 minutes. But after last year, we all worry.

And yes, the 'freakin' mullet' doesn't reassure anyone.

BS--I suppose you're right about Larry, although one might think that $14 mil a year would at least guarantee that a player practices hard, regardless of his playing time. (But perhaps that's pie-in-the-sky.)